


Birthmark

by ivoryandhorn



Category: Naruto, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Community: no_true_pair, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-31
Updated: 2009-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivoryandhorn/pseuds/ivoryandhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Uchiha Itachi mastered many arts. This was not one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birthmark

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _Raven and Uchiha Itachi: transformation of some kind (genderswitch? body swap? species shift?)_

As a child, Itachi had been quietly envious of the scions of summoning lines. What would it be like, he wondered, to walk the world with a trustworthy companion a few brief seals away. Shisui was a good friend, but he was not trustworthy, though he did allow himself to be bound by blood. It seemed little was thicker than blood after all, something Itachi had learned all too well.

He did not know when the idea first entered into his mind. Perhaps Shisui's pretense had simply scraped rawer than usual over his nerves, or perhaps it was that the envy of his youth had begun making itself known of late. Whatever it was, one night Itachi found himself slipping into the musty basement beneath the Nakano Shrine, he pulled from the dusty shelves a single fat scroll, cracked its code, gathered supplies, and carried it all with him out of the compound, into the woods that surrounded Hidden Village of Leaves. The dead leaves carpeting the forest floor crackled as he unrolled the heavy paper over them.

He stripped and inked the red symbols down his arms, along his ribs and chest and face. The characters were unfamiliar, barbaric in their strange angles and sharp contrast to his pale skin. The ink was too brightly colored by far, but in the breathless dark of the woods he could not help but liken the red markings to blood. Appropriate, he thought. The Uchiha had been forged in blood, had grown fat on blood, and would likely end in blood. Of course they would seek power using nothing else.

Itachi cut his palms and spread his skinny arms, reciting the scroll's words. The syllables were slippery and awkward in his mouth, in a language he did not know. _Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos._

The wind blew through the trees, raising goose pimples over his bare skin. The stars winked out one by one. The faint sounds of civilization deadened as if cotton had been stuffed into his ears. Itachi shivered. Red appeared in the darkness before him; a bright, malevolent pinprick of light. It grew, it doubled in number. It doubled again. Itachi closed his eyes.

_ **I am here.** _

Slowly he opened his eyes, feeling the Sharingan take hold. Distantly, he knew it to be an automatic response to fear. Immediately, he fought the urge to flee. Before him stood an enormous raven, easily twice the height of a full-grown man. Its feathers gleamed only at their edges; its beak was a gentle curve with a cruel tip. Its four eyes glowed faintly, their crimson color brutal and bright. The raven shuffled from foot to foot, absently preened the feathers of its left wing.

_ **Do you not speak, young one?** _

"I am Uchiha Itachi," he said weakly, and cursed his youth. His voice sounded even thinner and more insubstantial in this void. "Son of Uchiha Fugaku…heir of the Uchiha clan."

_**So it seems Madara's blood lives on,**_ the creature mused, to itself. _**Though it seems not for much longer.**_

"Who do you speak of?" Itachi asked, tamping down fear so curiosity rose to the fore. "I have never seen an Uchiha Madara in the bloodline scrolls…"

_**No, you would not,**_ the raven agreed. _**Just as you have never heard of Trigon's seven spawn, or the disappearance of lady Roth, or the last prophecy of Arella of Azarath.**_

"Prophecy?" Despite himself, Itachi found his interest piqued. He largely discounted prophecies as wishful thinking, gullible fools rightfully conned into parting with their coin. Yet he could not help but feel that this strange, powerful creature must surely know more than charlatans; a single thread of truth to guide him through the lies that seemed to be breeding around him these days. "What prophecy?"

This time the raven's gaze was almost pitying. _**It is better not to know, young one. Better to simply live, free of fear.**_

"I would prefer to know," Itachi said as firmly as he dared. "If my future is fated—I wish for the chance to change it."

_**Oh, young one.**_ The raven hopped closer, and Itachi immediately backed away. _**I, too, once thought to deny my blood.**_

"What happened?" he asked softly.

_**Alas,**_ said the raven. _**I could not.**_

"I would like to know anyway." There was no future that could not be changed, he felt. All Itachi needed was to know what was supposed to happen—so he could make it into what he desired, instead. "It is not the role of the summon to command," he added, a trifle impatiently.

The raven sighed. _**I would have spared you, young one, if only there was any other way to scrub out his taint.**_

Before Itachi could ask what this latest pronouncement meant, the raven had hopped back and from the depths of its spread wings came a swarm of smaller ravens, deformed things with enormous beaks and tiny bodies, high chittering voices and huge red eyes. They hopped on the ground before him, gazing up in a parody of innocence. The summon opened its beak, its mouth a patch of stars in darkness. The words of the birds sounded around him like the chiming of innumerable bells, struck him not through his ears but through the marrow of his bones.

_ **Leaves cannot hide the blemish of the sundered land. The sun sets on still water, coaxed by your own hand. The crimson tide springs forth and the eternal laughs. The child breaks but remains unbroken. The snake comes, plucks the egg and is consumed.** _

The little birds hopped closer, reared back, and Itachi saw that their beaks were lined with razor teeth, their eyes narrowing and doubling from two to four. He tried to turn, to turn, to hide, but coils of black smoke held him still. The little birds shrieked at him, flew at him with their stunted wings; drew blood with each peck and bite and sweep of knife-edge feathers.

_**Sun, moon, and storm bow before you! The red moon welcomes you with dagger-lined jaws as the twice-shadow weeps! The betrayer will come with madness in his veins and hate in his heart! You will die for his love, and only then will you be loved in turn!**_

He screamed, but the sound was drowned beneath the ravens' final words.

_**Scion of flame and fratricide!**_ they howled. _**YOU CANNOT OUTRUN YOUR BLOOD.**_

Itachi awoke in the leaves, his head pounding relentlessly. The ink had vanished from his body but his body ached as if stung a hundred times over by irate mosquitoes. Of the summon there was no sign: he was forced to admit, angrily and ungraciously, that he had failed. He rolled up the scroll, packed away his materials, and returned to the compound to sleep away the anger and shame.

In the nights that followed, however, something changed. Itachi felt weighed as if by great worry, from no source he could identify. His dreams were vague and restless things, filled with echoing wings and crimson eyes, a deep and hollow voice reciting words he could never remember upon waking. The lines beneath his eyes deepened and lengthened; when Itachi deigned to look in a mirror he saw an old man's face on a young boy's body.

When the Sandaime made his final request, Itachi did not hesitate to accept: it was oddly freeing to grasp the slender scroll in his hand, as if the nameless worries of months past had resolved into quiet conviction. He could already see how he could carry out his final mission as a ninja of the Hidden Village of Leaves, how he would manipulate its parameters to suit his purpose for Sasuke.

It was as if his path was already mapped out before him, and all he need do was walk it.

Whatever its end.


End file.
